Change Part 2 – You Don’t Have to be Lonely Adam Donyes You do not have to be lonely. As statistics and research suggest, this is the loneliest generation in the history of humanity. Several articles have come out in the last couple of months and at a lot of people, because of technology in today’s day and age, are just not known. People don’t know them. They know the facade they want to portray on LinkedIn and Facebook and Snapchat and Twitter and Instagram and everything else, but they aren’t really known. So, I thought you know what? I don’t even know if my own six-year-old knows me very well. I was going to do an activity with him yesterday and throughout the weekend. We grabbed a 1,000 piece, 1980s puzzles, which was the generation I grew up in. The best decade ever in my opinion. He got to know a lot more about Dad just doing this puzzle. It was a blast. You can’t see it all clearly, but this is just a collage of 80s and it was awesome, and it was nostalgic. He’s pointing to people and asking me, “Who’s this lady in her white pajamas?” I was like “Well, that’s Madonna.” “What does she do?” “She sings.” “She doesn’t sing anymore?” “Well, kind of. Reincarnated through Miley Cyrus, but yeah, she’s still around.” He would ask me other questions. He’d say, “No way, Dad! You guys had Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles?” The 80s had everything before you, punk. Transformers… That was us. You guys are just reinventing the wheel. We had it all before you did. Then he asked, “Who’s this football player?” I was like, “Oh, that’s Joe Montana. He experienced the sweet success of super bowls until he got traded to the Chiefs.” 3953 Green Mountain Drive, Branson, MO 65616 417-336-5452 woodhills.org All the Chiefs fans are like, “You better hurry this up so I can catch the noon kick off buddy.” And then right next to Montana is this guy known as Donald Trump. He was like, “Wait a minute that’s our U.S. President.” I go, “Yeah, he wasn’t back then.” “What did he do before he was our U.S. president?” I was like, “Well, Aiden, it just depends who you ask. If you ask some people, he was a really successful business man. If you ask other people, it was really stormy waters.” I committed to it. Ted says you just have to commit to political jokes and you’ll be good. I was 100% committed to it. He was like, “Who’s this guy with the sunglasses and who’s this guy in the aircraft carrier?” I said, “Oh, that’s Tom Cruise.” “Wait, Tom Cruise is still around?” “Yeah, that Scientology must really be working for him because he hasn’t aged a bit.” Right? We had a blast going through the 1980s puzzle and just getting him to know me. Here’s the reality. As you guys walked in here this morning, some of you weren’t known. You’re not even known by your own spouses. You're not even known by your own kids. You're definitely not know by anyone else outside. I want to welcome our online viewer. I want you guys to be known by everybody in here too. Today, we’re going to be talking about not being lonely and what it means to be known. If this is the most isolated and depressed and lonely generation in the history of humanity, what does it look like to become known and not be those things. Dr. Tim Elmore, who does a lot of research on generations and decades, etc., uses this thing called habitudes. He’ll use images to provide conversation and to provoke thought. So, he’d show an image like this (photo of a person standing at the end of a long dock over a lake) and he would let thought drive out of it. What do you see? What do you perceive? For some of you, seeing this is pure bliss. A mom of five kids under six is like, “Oh please, Lord, give me that. That would be amazing.” Solitude is healthy. As a matter of fact, solitude should be an important spiritual discipline we practice. Some of you that saw this instantly said, “That’s me. I’m looking at myself. I’m lonely. I’m sad. I’m depressed. I’m anxious. I’m all those things.” It’s funny how a picture can drive two different things out of us. While solitude is important, isolation is not. Dr. Henry Cloud says it this way, “There is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected, and one isn’t. Solitude replenishes, isolations diminishes.” I’m an introvert/extrovert which means I can be extroverted for a little while, but then I definitely need to be introverted. For the longest time in my marriage, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to just completely jump in and engage with my wife when I got home from work, but I was engaging with people all day. The reality is for the first nine and a half years of our marriage, I had zero commute. I had a skateboard ride to work when I was in Kansas City and then I had a four-wheeler ride across the street when I moved back to Branson. There was no commute. So, think about that. I’m pouring into people all day and then five minutes later, I’m walking into my home. Now we moved in the last six months and it’s crazy. She says, “Your so full of life.” It’s because I’m getting 20 – 25 minutes to decompress. I never had it and I never realized how important that solitude time is. The radio is not on. It’s just me talking to God, praying, processing. That solitude time is to refuel my soul in Christ, not anyone else, and it’s not isolation because I’m actually having a conversation with somebody and he’s actually listening to me and he actually hears everything. As a matter of fact, he knows what to pray for you before you do. He intercedes on your behalf. Mother Teresa of Calcutta says this: “The most terrible is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” So, I’m here to tell you if you walked in here and you feel lonely, you feel like you’ve got a thousand friends on social media, but no one really knows you, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be alone, you don’t have to be isolated. As a matter of fact, it’s isolation that destroys. It’s isolation that lives in the dark. It’s isolation that feeds addiction. It’s isolation that breaks up relationships. In Genesis 1, we see this macro view of creation. And then in Genesis 2, we see the micro view. In Genesis 1, we see that God separates the expanses – the light and the darkness – and he calls one day, and he calls one night. And then he creates the earth and then he creates the mountains and then he creates the lakes and the seas. And then he creates the animals. And then he creates man. It says after he did all these things on the first day, and on the second day, and the third day, and on the fourth day, and on the fifth day, and on the sixth day… It says God saw all that he did, and it was good. Everything he created was good, including man. But then the first time we see God say that it is not good is in Genesis 2. Look at this. So, he created all these things. He said the trees are good, the animals are good, man is good, but then he says hold on. 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them… Now, think about this for a second. He said, “It’s not good for man to be alone, I’ll make you a suitable helper. But before I do that, have fellowship with these animals,” but it didn’t work. There are two things to point out. If you’re a cat lady, that’s not fellowship. If you're a dog hoarder, that’s not fellowship. When my wife and I lived in Kansas City, four houses up from us was this lady, and every day – I’m not joking – we saw here walking a different dog. I was like, “Babe, where are these dogs; they’re not outside anywhere. She was keeping 30 dogs inside her house. She was a widow and she was really alone. I felt badly when the city came and took all of her dogs. “Baby, we have to invite her over to dinner. We’ve got to love on this dog hoarder.” Animals aren’t fellowship. Your cats aren’t fellowship. The other thing to point out here is that God gave Adam work before the fall.